Richard Senate: Ghost Hunter

Richard Senate has been chasing ghosts and hauntings for 23 years. In that time, he has witnessed a laundry list of paranormal phenomena and developed a small list of theories about what might be causing the activity.

We began the interview with a short discussion of his adventure fiction. His newest collection of short stories is entitled, Thrilling Adventure Tales In The Age of Steam. We spent the next two hours in deep discussion about his countless ghost cases. From the poltergeist that manifested a dancing clown in a hallway to a phantom wound on a psychic that bled profusely but very quickly healed, a talk with Richard Senate is always full of strange and unsettling stories. Throughout the conversation, we kept coming back to possible theories that would make sense of some of the phenomena. Mr. Senate also busted a few myths about ghosts and related phenomena.

We ended with Mr. Senate’s plea for cooperation amongst paranormal researchers in order to advance what is seen as a hobby for amateurs into more of a scientific pursuit.

The Mexican prison Richard mentioned is San Juan de Ulúa, where all the political prisoners ended up.

My family used to spend our Easter holidays in the house of some relatives, in this town in Jalisco called Ocotlán. The house was pretty old, and it was said to be haunted —the folklore dictates that when there’s a ghost haunting a house, there’s usually buried gold or money from the time of the Revolution.

That house spawned a lot of funny anecdotes. Like one time my sister Verónica asked my cousin Gabriela to accompany her to the kitchen for a glass of water or whatever, and obviously she didn’t want to go along because all our scorn for the old legends died out with the light of day. So the two young girls scurry rapidly downstairs to the kitchen, and they turn on the light sighing with relief; next thing you know they both scream and wake everybody!

So my dad comes down, not wearing any pants, and with a gun on his hand, yelling “what is it, what happened?!”. Had the young girls experienced an encounter with the legendary spectral apparition? had an interloper entered the premises perhaps?

No, nothing of the sort. The two city girls had seen a mouse crossing the kitchen floor after the light went on. I’ll let you figure out the kind of colloquial expletives my father uttered on his way to the bedroom 😉

How can ghost hunters keep at it for 25 years and never actually capture real proof? I’ve spent at least 100 hours collectively looking at the best ghost videos on youtube, and have seen maybe 5 that have any meat to them. It makes me wonder why this guy is now writing fiction…

Depends what you consider “real proof.” I think that readings on EMF instruments, anomalous photographs, audio recordings and videos and single and multiple witness events are strong indicators that there is something that exists that deserves our scrutiny. There is also a well-documented history of what we call “ghosts” or “hauntings.” The problem is that we cannot produce or experience these things on demand, and that sort of proof is at the heart of the scientific method, which is how most of society currently determines what is real. This doesn’t mean that we can’t be curious about things that do not fit that model.

I am certain that Mr. Senate’s motivation is sincere and stems from a desire to get at the truth. He continues his research as well as his fiction writing. I am sorry if these ideas did not come across while listening to the program, since I believe we covered them.

I read both of Alexandra Neel’s books on Tibet, difficult read at best but amazing that she was doing this.

Tulkas, it seems that this phenomenon is much more prevalent now a days. With the amount of people on this planet, and the stress so much of it is under.

How about the idea of creating electronic ” feeding stations”, battery pacs that are placed in haunted areas so the other equipment used for acquisition are not affected by energy drains.

There was a study done with bomb site officers as the came near the target. There was a measurable change in brain/ skin potential fully 5 seconds before they actually saw the target. It was reproducible. Strange how instruments failed story you talked about.

Another great episode. And thanks to this interview I’m busy scouring the internet searching for Ley Line maps for South Carolina. My winter break from school will be spent trying to see if there is any connection between these energy lines and some of South Carolina’s haunted, cryptid, or UFO events. My first attempted correlation will be with the Lizard Man of Bishopville, which I have written about over at Binnall of America. It’s the closest to me as far as I know.

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